When it comes to her smalls, what does the ‘woke’ woman wear? While the ready-to-wear market clamours to promote its political connotations, with brands falling over themselves to explain to customers how this coat is empowering, and that eye-cream is ideal for feminists, the lingerie market has lagged behind in embracing the conversations around diversity, inclusivity and meaningful body-positivity.

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Indeed lingerie, and the megawatt spectacles that constitute the big underwear shows – the Victoria’s Secret show has a yearly audience of around 1.4 billion people in 192 countries – has doggedly stuck to a tried-and-tested formula, despite the seismic shift effected by #MeToo and Times Up. Where is the Phoebe Philo of the underwear world, chic women wonder? Who is making underwear for the ‘Nasty Women’? The Pantsuit Nation? Who will clothe the pussies as they grab back?

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Enter Rihanna. Not content with merely shaking up a beauty market that seemed committed to ignoring non-white women, she’s now Fenty-fying our underwear drawers. She’s spotted the gap in the market for underwear that doesn’t equate female excellence with a penchant for goji berries and 5am starts to get to the gym. Her Savage x Fenty show, presented during New York Fashion Week, was a festival of flesh of all different skin tones. There were curves and stretchmarks, sagging stomach and six-packs, love handles and super ‘fupas’ (thanks again, Beyoncé) and enormous pregnant bellies – the model Slick Woods has since revealed that her labour started as she walked the runway in nipple covers and an elastic harness.

Rihanna with her Fenty lingerie collection.

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The eclectic crew was cast by Samuel Ellis Scheinman. “Savage X Fenty show has just started and I can already tell that this lingerie brand is going to kick Victoria’s Secret’s butt. Strong athletic women, no silly headdresses or diamond bras. And the collection will be for sale online the minute the show ends,” tweeted the journalist Christina Binkley, as she sat enthralled.

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“The show was raw. We were all half-naked skin, bones, rolls, curves, scars and stretch marks 100 per cent out for the world to see. In confidence, power and unity we were able to be unapologetically ourselves,” says the fabulous shaven-headed model Jazzelle Zanaughtti, who wore a green lingerie set that was a tribute to the lime puffa she wore to the show’s casting. “Personally, I usually really don’t like doing shows, they always make me feel like I have to put on a face and a walk that doesn’t feel like mine. But this one was so special because I felt like me. Everyone was so different, and all looked equally amazing. Most of the time in fashion, diversity feels like it’s more about hitting a quota. But this show was different: it was organic, and it came from a place of love.”

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Savage x Fenty also suggested answers to the difficult and often awkward questions of how fashion can be ‘sexy’ in an age where women are increasingly speaking out about being objectified and harassed. Rihanna understands that the answer isn’t as simple as modesty – she is after all, one of the most sexually confident women in music – nay, the world. (Remember, she once sang: “No heels, No shirt, No skirt, All I'm in is just skin.”) Yet she seems to have a more nuanced grasp of the slippery concept of empowerment and choice than other execs in the lingerie, advertising and publishing industries.

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Rihanna understands, for example, that our current market and ideals of the pin-up have been shaped by years of dominant male expectations around what makes a woman attractive. Those so-called sexy signifiers – breasts, bums, long limbs, slim bodies, flat stomachs, long hair – are male preferences. It was these constructed ideals that Rihanna was playing with, hence the pregnant bellies, the curvaceous forms, the dance moves that looked vaguely aggressive – a far cry from the cheerleader pointing and kiss-blowing we see on other lingerie runways.

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Indeed, rather than have models walk a runway, as passive objects to be viewed, Rihanna constructed a garden for them to prowl and explore. We were simply lucky to peek into it. “I do believe that Rihanna has definitely played a part in how we perceive beauty, in the sense that she is a very inclusive business woman, in a very equality-elusive society,” says the Sudanese model Aweng Chuol. “It felt amazing to walk in a show that was so different to the many shows that have been happening in NYC season after season.”

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The casting director James Scully has been speaking out about fashion’s equality problem for a long while and is happy to see change in the conservative lingerie market. “I think the idea of that kind of Vegas-style parade of overt showgirls is no longer modern,” he argues. “A pageant-type, Barbie show feels totally out of step. Even Miss America is trying to modernize the way they hold a competition.”

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New players such as Savage x Fenty, the bed-to-street brand Les Girls Les Boys, or Nubian Skin, which offers a great array of flesh-toned lingerie in shades other than pale peach, are forging the underwear of the future. “I think it’s a shame women have to feel insecure or self-conscious about how their bodies look,” said Rihanna after the show. “They’ve been taught by society that only one thing works.” It seems the lingerie industry misguidedly felt the same.